CHICO >> An Olympic gold medal is considered by many to be the pinnacle of athletic success across any sport, and Paradise’s Jack Yerman achieved the feat representing Team USA in the 1960 Olympics in Rome.

The Woodland native ran track and field and played football at UC Berkeley before winning the 1,600-meter relay race in Rome with teammates Earl Young, Glenn Davis and Otis Davis. Berman moved north to Chico High School, teaching from 1967 until 2002. He coached track for 12 years and came out of retirement to be an assistant track coach from 1998-2001.

On May 13 Yerman will be honored during the 50th Chico Sports Hall of Fame and Senior Athletes Banquet. Yerman will be joined by fellow Olympian Emily Azevedo; the late Larry Allen, a NFL Hall of Famer and Butte College alumnus; and longtime Butte College athletic trainer Fran Babich, who was the first female athletic trainer in the community college system in California, as part of the 50th Hall of Fame Class.

“I feel honored. It’s nice to be remembered,” said the 86-year old Yerman with a laugh. “For some years I’d be in Lowes and hear people yelling at me, or at a basketball game I had someone say, ‘You’re still alive? I thought you were old when you taught us.’

“I think all I wanted when I started was to be on a team and have a uniform. Even if I sat on the bench, which I did at times, I just wanted to be part of the group, and that was my biggest thrill was to be there with the boys. I had no other aspiration, and then after that it was let’s see what I can do.”

Since Yerman’s retirement from teaching he’s loved spending time with family, and anyone who knows him knows how much he loves to share stories. Yerman used his stories not only to tell stories after teaching, but also being able to share stories first-hand while teaching history at Chico High.

Yerman ran track for the US Army, he experienced the Cold War, he experienced Spy Craft, he experienced communism, he experienced disinformation, he experienced McCarthyism, he was in the first US exchange in the Cold War to go to communist Russia and compete, and he traveled for the state department throughout Africa and did track clinics.

Yerman has had students ask him if his stories were actually true, and he when he speaks to general audiences he has one message he likes to be sure gets across.

“The general message is that we all can’t be Olympic gold medal winners, but we can all be excellent,” Yerman said. “One way you get excellent is that you learn from failure and you learn from success, and you try to do better tomorrow than you do today.”

Where it started

While many athletes today train for their sports for years with goals of playing on the next field, track or court, Yerman’s speed came as a necessity. He grew up in a poor family without a car on the outskirts of Woodland, and if he wanted to get anywhere on time he had to run. He began to enjoy running, and not just using it as a way to get from here to there.

“I remember at lunch in junior high school I always liked running, I put a high jump and long jump pit in my backyard, and I had a neighborhood track meets,” Yerman said. “I always enjoyed it and I always knew I was going to be good even when I was lousy.”

Yerman was a late physical developer in high school, and it wasn’t until his junior and senior years of high school when he began to have success in athletics. He didn’t have much muscle and wanted to get stronger, and it was his junior year when he found the weight room. Coaches would advise Yerman not to lift too much because he would get muscle bound, but to him that didn’t make sense. He would lift weights in his bedroom with cement floors three to four times a day.

“I figured the stronger you get the faster you go, so I got pretty strong,” Yerman said.

The weight room translated to the football field and the track, and Yerman contributes a job at a local bakery as another key to his growth.

“I had some food insecurity at home, but at the bakery I could eat all I wanted,” Yerman said. “I had all the milk I wanted, and with all the exercising I was doing I put on muscle — like 30 pounds.”

Colleges first began noticing Yerman his senior season of high school football, but when track season came in spring schools had already made all of their commitments. UC Berkeley offered Yerman a scholarship for football, which he happily took after admitting football was his favorite sport. He did also admit that despite enjoying football more, he was probably better on the track.

Multi-sport athlete

Yerman arrived at Berkeley, and remembers his first game very clear against Michigan State with a crowd of 80,000 people. He quickly had his “welcome to college football” moment. Yerman, a running back, tried to block 6-foot-9, 300 pound Sam Williams, had his helmet broken and his nose broken.

“It loosened my teeth and I was looking up at him. Welcome to football,” Yerman said.

While on a football scholarship at Cal, Yerman was approached by the track coaches, who convinced him to join the team. He had several key influencers at Berkeley who helped take his running skill to the next level.

In high school his track coaches didn’t show much technique, but Brutus Hamilton showed Yerman proper technique. Yerman also credits his teammates at Berkeley to his success, saying training against such strong competitors in practice brought each other to the next level. He had a good friend named Jerry Siebert who ran with him at Berkeley and competed in three Olympics, and the two were on several World Record relay teams together. Yerman kept in touch with Siebert until he passed away in 2022, and still keeps in touch with other Olympic teammates who are still living such as Earl Young.

Olympics

Yerman competed in the Olympics while he was a college athlete at UC Berkeley. His then-wife Margo was a student at Cal with him, and Yerman said Margo had more belief that he would qualify for the Olympics than he did. She had a ticket to Rome before Yerman had qualified.

When asked about the race, Yerman said the running was the easy part. He said the hardest part was hanging around, traveling, and off-the-track ordeals. A lot of his team got sick, coaches and managers scheduled a meet in Switzerland two days before the Olympics, and it wore out many of the sprinters.

“If you get ready for a big race, you don’t run hard right up before the big race. That’s when you back off,” Yerman said. “It was interesting times.”

Yerman said his favorite memory from the 1960 Olympics wasn’t something he was a part of, or even something Yerman witnessed first-hand that year. His favorite memory was hearing the story of Abebe Bikila, the winner of the marathon. Bikila was a native of Ethiopia, who ran the race across cobblestone, gravel, glass, asphalt, and up and down hills with no shoes. Yerman learned Bikila trained by birds across Ethiopia on the high plains to provide food for his family, and would not stop until the bird would get tired and fall out of exhaustion.

“It proved that track is not a sophisticated sport,” Yerman said. “It’s just one where you have to keep going and going.”

Teaching, coaching

From former students, to former teaching colleagues, to former coaching colleagues, Yerman left a unique stamp on all in his 35 years at Chico High.

Sam Simmons, a former Chico High teacher and basketball coach and Chico Sports Hall of Fame class of 2009, said Yerman was always very supportive of his students and always in their corner. He knew which of his students were in athletics, and was at school sporting events very frequently.

Simmons said Berman’s story-telling ability made him different than other teachers.

“He was able to tell a story and weave history and things kids might not think about he brought to the forefront,” Simmons said. “The style he had and different take he had on how to get a message across was unique. He was fascinating to me, who was kind of a history buff but in physical education. He was just always very supportive.”

Yerman came to Chico High and coached track initially while living in Paradise, which he still calls home today. He only momentarily lived in Chico when his home was burned in the 2018 Camp Fire, but Paradise has always been home. He moved there with his first wife who has since passed away, and his current wife Carol lived in Paradise with her kids as well.

“This is where they were raised, our kids went to Paradise High School, and kids were born at Feather Hospital. We know the people at the hardware store, we know the restaurants,” Carol Mattern said.

Yerman added, “and we know where to buy the best ice cream, you know!”

While many remember Yerman’s teaching days, JJ Mitchell — now the head coach of the Pleasant Valley volleyball team — remembers Yerman when Mitchell got his teaching and coaching start at Chico High in 1998. Then-principal Rodger Williams called Mitchell into his office and said he had to coach the track team since he was a full-time physical education teacher. Yerman agreed to come out of retirement, and refused payment as assistant coach. Instead Yerman and Mitchell used that money to split it between three Chico State graduates to coach sprints, jumps and throws. Yerman coached the 400-meter runners and the relay teams.

“It was three incredible years of apprenticeship,” Mitchell said. “We took over a male track and field team of 25 athletes total. Three years later we were EAL Championship and NSCIF runner up. and had a state champion in Teak Wilburn (who went on to participate in high jump at Cal), and grew to a male team of 125-plus student athletes … Jack has been one of those males in my life that filled a male role model need as a man, coach and teacher. Jack in one of the most selfless people I have ever met. Given all he accomplished he deserves to brag, but I have never witnessed that. Any conversation is only about family, health, and friends.”

Real-life lessons

One event Yerman may be remembered most by in his time at Chico High School was when he brought former United States Olympian Tommie Smith to Chico High. Smith, who raised his fist at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City alongside John Carlos during the medal ceremony as a protest against racial discrimination and human rights abuses, was friends with Yerman, and Yerman brought Smith to Chico to speak at a voluntary assembly.

Someone from the John Burke Society had been invited to speak at an assembly, and Yerman felt his students should experience both sides.

“(Smith) talked about the importance of education and how education opens doors and opportunities for you,” said Yerman’s son Bruce Yerman, who wrote a book about his father’s life after speaking with his father and researching newspaper articles. “He talked about the kind of racism happening in the early 70s and what he had experienced and why he did what he did to make a point. That’s just one of the dozen different activities, whether they were bringing in guest speakers or running simulations, my father was big on simulations to teach kids thing. There was always something happening in class outside of the textbook to help kids feel what they were learning and not just read it, and help them apply to real life situations.”

Whether it be on the track or in the classroom, Yerman’s impact and journey from Woodland to Chico to home in Paradise today is one to be remembered.